There are so many ideas about nutrition out there. Honestly, it is a very frustrating thing to me. My husband's philosophy is, eat for calories and then take a vitamin pill. The Weston A Price Foundation says you have to eat lots of grass fed meat, raw milk, and fermented grains, especially while young or pregnant. The vegetarians believe that the way to fight off cancer is to keep you diet to less then 5% animal products. There is the paleolithic diet, the Adkins diet, the SouthBeach diet, and many more I'm not aware of. So with all the choices and differing opinions I can relate to Joseph Smith who felt very confused about all the different religions back in 1805.
I've given the ideas of the diets, much reflection, probably not enough study (I can only do so much before I'm throwing up my arms in frustration) and some experimentation.
What we've tried:
Vegetarianism. We still had milk and eggs, but no meat. We had lots of beans, rice, nuts. We ate lots of chick peas. My husband was the initiator on this. I was freaked out because I had NO idea how to cook without using meat. I did have fun experimenting with new foods and recipes. This felt good in a lot of ways, but we were always hungry! I think that is what did us in finally. My husband would say, it was because of all the chick peas I was feeding him, "If I have to choose between bacon and chick peas, I choose bacon."
Raw Milk: This one came as I nursing two children, and I was always hungry. The baby wasn't responding well to milk, but I was CRAVING it. I needed to find a middle ground. I read a post about nutrition during pregnancy and the writer recommended the Weston A Price diet. They suggested raw whole milk. I was intrigued. The literature said many people didn't have the same negative reaction to raw milk that they might have to pasteurized, milk. I was convinced I wanted to try it, so I drove an hour, with a screaming baby in the car to buy two gallons from a local farm. It was the best milk I've ever had, and it really hit the spot so I think it was the right decision then, but I'm not convinced it is the right decision forever... here's why:
Its inconvenient and expensive. Expensive as in $10/gallon. Inconvenient as in ...Did I say I drove an hour each way to get it? Its also risky, since they don't pasteurize or homogenize the milk, its safety is very dependent on the health of the cows and the cleanliness of the dairy. This adds to its inconvenience, because it makes it very difficult to find and apparently not legal in many states. There is only one farm in Phoenix that sells it. Once I reached the farm, I realized from the lack of grass and the number of flys that entered my car when I opened the door, that these were not grass fed cows. This farm uses organic feed, which is okay, but its one more bump in the supply chain... and that matters when you're foregoing standard food safety protocols.
It was the best tasting milk I've ever had! I like to think that some things that are good for you do taste good, and this milk tasted GOOD! So maybe someday, when I live in a house with a big yard, I'll buy a milk cow, but until then, the raw milk might only be an occasional treat.
Now What? Whole Wheat!
So, now I'm embarking on a new experiment where I'll mill the flour for our family's bread and then bake homemade bread. I'll try the experiment until I have used 3, 5 gallon buckets of wheat. Then we'll review and decide how it is best to move forward in our family.
A Reluctant Start:
Honestly, people who mill and make their own bread always seemed a bit too "relief society-ee" for me. A wheat mill has been on our "purchase list" for years now mostly as an emergency preparedness/self reliance tool. The holdback has been the combo of the mill and the fancy Bosch mixer is an investment of nearly $700 dollars. I can buy a lot of bread with $700 and that bread doesn't come with the added burden of actually having to make it!
Why 15 gallons of wheat?
Well, I compromised. I'm foregoing the Bosch mixer and settled on a $160 wheat grinder. I figure at $1.25/loaf, once we've consumed the 15 gallons we'll have broken even (based on a very rough estimate) on the grinder. After the 15 gallons, if I feel strongly that I want to integrate bread making into our families' lifestyle, then I'll invest in the Bosch.
How I feel now:
I've moved from a reluctant start to a hopeful beginning. It seems that my self-reliance experiment might actually hold some solutions to my confustion with nutrition as well. Here are the reasons why:
First and foremost, there is that clause in the Word of wisdom that says, "Nevertheless, wheat for the man."
Secondly, there are my own observations... many of the families I've known that are blessed with shapely figures seem to consume abundantly a few things in their diets: eggs, milk, and whole wheat bread.
Third, there is some research that indicates this effort might help with some of my nutritional frustration. Research claims that freshly milled whole wheat contains 26 known vitamins and minerals. It contains a high percentage of the bran and fiber. All which helps fill you up with nutritious calories. My toddler will eat of piece of this toast with honey, so we're off to a positive start.
So, I'm finally ready to try a "Wheat for the Man" experiment. My hope is that by improving this one thing in our families' diet it might provide some additional lattitude for the other things that we do kind of poorly in our diets. Maybe if I feed them a quality whole grain bread toast in the morning, it won't be soo bad when we have frozen pizza for dinner that night? That's my feeling, anyway... if I can be more obedient in this one thing, the Lord can open up more knowledge and ideas so I can be better in other things.
Its interesting to me how my effort to simply be more obedient in self-reliance has already provided some spiritual perspective. I find myself asking, could storing wheat and baking bread (what I considered to be the uncool Relief Society pasttime) really be a valuable key to the healthy eating of my family? Not funny colored smoothies or carbohydrate deprived diets? It seems almost too simple. Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't. We are told that sometimes the simpleness of the way is precisely what keeps us from being obedient to a commandment. Perhaps I'll check in again with recipes I've tried and lessons learned. At any rate, I'm planting my seed of faith and now I plan to experiment on the word, specifically the words that say, "Wheat for the man!"
No comments:
Post a Comment